Wren the Fox Witch es-6 Read online

  Chapter 8. Witch

  The longer Wren sat at the table and listened to these strangers babble in Hellan, the less frightened she felt, and eventually even a bit of boredom sank in. Omar looked and sounded as calm and comfortable as ever, and that was enough assurance for her, for the moment. The dwarf had been kind enough, offering her a seat, and once everyone started saying “Nadira” and “Koschei” they lost all interest in her and her ears.

  Thank you, Woden. That was a kindness.

  But then someone beat on the door and the dwarf stepped out and when he stepped back in everything was different. There was fear in the air, even in the eyes of the beautiful lady in her fancy green dress and the tall scowling man in his black and red uniform. And then, just as she was losing patience with not being able to understand what was being said, she realized that Omar was speaking in Rus again.

  “…to include my young friend in the conversation,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Wren Olgasdottir of Denveller, my apprentice and student of natural philosophy and metaphysics.”

  Every eye was once again on her. Wren nodded to the lady in green. “Hello. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  The lady smiled.

  “Wren,” Omar continued, “I’d like you to meet Lady Nerissa, the Duchess of Constantia, and her ally in arms Prince Vlad IV of Vlachia. And these two gentlemen are their intelligence officers, Major Tycho Xenakis, from Hellas, and Signore Salvator Fabris, from Italia.”

  “Hello.” She nodded at them.

  “It would seem, my dear, that these good people have just now learned about the small matter of the walking corpses, which have appeared as close as eighty miles away from where we are sitting right now. And being the most gracious and humble fellow that I am, I have agreed to help them deal with the problem.”

  Wren looked at him. “You have? What about Alexandria?”

  “We’ll get there soon enough. But the Duchess and the Prince have extended their considerable hospitality to us in exchange for our help, and I think this is a fine opportunity to rest and study before we continue on our way.” He leaned closer to her and said, in Yslander, “Better to have them as allies than as jailers. And more importantly, it was the only way to get them to agree to return my seireiken.”

  “Ah.” She nodded, rubbing her thumb against the ring on her right hand, grateful that no one had thought to take her gloves and steal the bit of sun-steel on her finger. The ring felt warm against her skin. “All right. Then where do we begin?”

  “With a question,” Omar said, turning to their captors-turned-hosts. “Prince Vlad, I see you too wear a seireiken. I’ll skip over the very salient question of how you came to possess it and simply ask, when did you receive it?”

  “Ten months ago,” Vlad said. “It was a gift from Lady Nerissa, brought by these two men here.” He indicated Tycho and Salvator.

  “Ten months.” Omar frowned. “No, from what we heard, this business of the corpses only started this winter. So that’s probably not a factor. I do need to learn more about this area, though. It’s colder here, which is important when dealing with aether. Do you have any local experts in aether studies? Any of your Constantian priests, or perhaps even one of the Sons of Osiris here in the city? I’m sure there’s at least one Osirian in Stamballa advising the Eranians, but I doubt we’ll be able to speak to him any time soon.”

  “No,” said Lady Nerissa. “I do not have an Osirian in my court, nor would I wish to. I have met them before, and found them unpleasant.”

  “How tactful,” Omar said with a genuine smile. “Well, if there is no one else, then I-”

  “There is someone else,” Prince Vlad said. “Someone here who knows about mists and the dead.”

  Wren saw the dwarf close his eyes and rub his temples as he shook his head.

  “We have Koschei’s sainted mother,” the prince said.

  Omar paused, glanced at Wren, and then looked back at Vlad. “Here? In the city? Yaga is here now?”

  “Yes.”

  Wren touched Omar’s arm and said, “This is the immortal woman from Rus that you mentioned before?”

  Omar nodded.

  “The one you slept with?”

  He winced and nodded again.

  “You didn’t mention how you left things with her, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. And no, I didn’t leave on the best of terms.” Omar dragged his thumb down the edge of his unshaven jaw. “But we do need to speak to her. She’s had five hundred years to learn how aether behaves in a cold climate. We need that knowledge.”

  Wren nodded. “I suppose that makes sense.”

  Omar’s eyes lit up and he sat up a bit straighter as he said in a loud, clear voice, “My apprentice, I have a task for you.”

  Wren looked at him. “Oh no, no no no. Me? Why me? Not me. You have a history with her, you should be the one.”

  “No, my history with her would only get in the way. Besides, I suspect that I have many more important discussions to hold with these fine people.” Omar nodded at the duchess and prince. “So if you could interview the woman in question for me, it would be most helpful. Just ask about the corpses, ghosts, aether, the usual. Anything that seems relevant. It should be easy, you’ll have so much in common. She’s a witch, you’re a witch.”

  “I am a vala of Ysland!” Wren said more loudly than she had intended. She paused and said, more quietly, “I’m not a witch.”

  “I know, I understand how you feel, but here in this country, for all intents and purposes, you are a witch. You’re also the ideal person to speak to her for me.” Omar turned to the dwarf. “Major, would you be so kind as to escort my apprentice to see Yaga?”

  “Show some respect,” Vlad muttered. “Do not call the sainted mother by her name. Or if you must, at least call her Baba Yaga.”

  There was a brief discussion in Hellan and then the dwarf stood up and gestured to the door. Wren stood, pulled her scarf up over her head, and followed the major out into the larger audience chamber. A few waiting petitioners glanced up, and then turned back to their papers and ignored the pair walking down the corridor.

  “I’m sorry, what was your name again?” she asked. She glanced back at the closed doors of the room with a cold, sinking feeling that she might not see Omar again, that she was leaving her only anchor, guide, and protector behind her.

  “Call me Tycho,” he said. “Would you believe, I didn’t even have a surname until this year?”

  “A what?” Wren rubbed her right wrist where her sling should have been, and felt the lightness of her belt where her stag horn knife and pouch of sling-stones should have been.

  But I still have the ring. I still have the aether, only, it’s midday and the sun is warm and the aether is thin. If there’s trouble…

  “When I was promoted, I needed a surname,” Tycho said. “They’re not common where I come from, in Sparta. Then again, dwarfs aren’t common in Sparta either. So I chose Xenakis. It still feels strange to hear it. So you can just call me Tycho.”

  “Oh. All right.” Wren passed through the light falling from one of the tall stained windows and glanced down at her skirts. She could see the specks of dirt and blood clearly against the faded black of her clothes. “Could I wash up before I meet with this woman? We’ve been traveling for weeks now and I haven’t really changed or bathed since… a while.”

  “Absolutely. Please, follow me.” Tycho turned and led her through several doors, down corridors and across empty rooms until they came to a carpeted corridor. Every chamber had gleaming white walls hung with dark paintings of people lounging in gardens or being lashed by demons, and every window was framed with dark green curtains hung from golden rods, and every corner of the ceilings were armored in sculpted wooden panels, some covered in thin grooves and some crafted to look like leaves and berries. Wren tried to see all the details at once as she hurried after her guide.

  He paused in front of a closed door. “This is one of the rooms
kept for the Duchess’s niece, Daphne. But she was sent back to Athens with the rest of the family just before the siege began.”

  Tycho opened the door and Wren stepped inside. It was a small bedroom, and everything was covered in dusty white sheets. The bed, the dresser, the small table, and the chairs all looked like snowy little hills.

  “Here.” Tycho opened a tall cabinet and gestured to the clothing hanging on the rod. “Feel free to wear anything you like. Daphne won’t mind. She’s not the minding sort. And the wash room is right back here. I’ll just wait outside for you.” He stepped back out into the hall and closed the door.

  Wren glanced at the dozen or so dresses in the cabinet and then went to the wash room where she found a porcelain bath tub and a porcelain bowl on a wooden table. Above each basin were a pair of small hand-pumps, and after a moment’s experimentation she figured out how to make the left one produce lukewarm water and to make the right one produce freezing cold water. She stripped off her black jacket and black sweater and black blouse and black skirts and socks and stood over the bowl of warm water for several minutes scrubbing her face and arms and chest. She even soaked her hair and when she was finished the water in bowl was a curious blend of gray and brown, with many small brown things floating in it.

  I thought it would be worse.

  She wandered back out into the bedroom dripping water as she went and looked at the dresses again. There was only one in black.

  Well, that makes this simple.

  The long skirt was pleated and fringed in black lace, which she found amusing and she wondered how long that fringe would survive. The blouse was so thin and cold and smooth that she couldn’t imagine what sort of fabric it was made of, and resolved to ask Omar about it later. When she had the top on, she found that it too had black lace around the cuffs and the neck, and there were voluminous folds hanging from her upper and lower arms, overlapping to transform her arms into drooping black flowers. The black jacket at first seemed too small, but that was only because the sleeves only came down to her elbows, the better to display her layered blouse sleeves, she guessed.

  When she was finished dressing, she stood in front of the window and squinted at her dim reflection superimposed on the view of the palace grounds outside. A tiny draft whistled around the edge of the window and the movement of the air made her lace and ruffles and ribbons flutter gently around her.

  I look like a raven.

  She smiled.

  A pretty raven.

  She found a black ribbon in one of her jacket pockets and used it to tie her thick red hair back from her face, and then she covered her hair and ears with a thin black scarf that she found in the dress cabinet. She stepped back out into the hall and said, “I’m ready.”

  The short officer turned and looked at her, and froze. He blinked. “Uhm. Yes.” He smiled, and a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth made it look as though he wanted to speak but didn’t know what to say.

  Wren waited.

  “Right.” Tycho tugged his jacket down smooth over his chest and straightened his back. “Let’s be off.” He started walking and she followed, but he kept slowing down a bit to walk beside her instead of in front of her, and since she didn’t know where they were going, she kept slowing down to follow his lead, and so they proceeded rather slowly, glancing at each other every few moments.

  Either he thinks I’m pretty, or I put the dress on backwards and he’s trying to think of a polite way to tell me. I don’t think I’d know what to say to either one.

  She followed him out into the courtyard and down a broad brick road through a park of yellowed grass and naked trees. Gradually, the major stopped looking up at her and they quickened their pace, and her thoughts returned to the task at hand.

  Damn it, Omar. You old coward. Why am I going to talk to this woman? She doesn’t know me. I don’t know her.

  “Can I ask you something?” Tycho said, glancing up at her.

  Wren looked at him, and for a moment she forgot about the corpses and the immortals, and she saw a handsome young man struggling to keep pace beside her, and she slowed down a bit and managed a smile. “Sure. As long as it’s not about my ears.”

  “Oh.” He looked away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  Oh gods, he looks mortified!

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” she said. “I’m just a little sensitive about them, and it’s a rather long story.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I’d tell you about my condition, but it’s a rather short story.”

  She smiled, and he smiled back.

  “All right, well, I’ll tell you the short version then,” she said.

  “Just my type!”

  She said, “Well, there was a plague, and everyone in my country was becoming infected, including me. It wasn’t a normal plague, with spots and smelly bile and death. It was a… soul plague, I guess. Then Omar found a cure, except it wasn’t quite perfect, and everyone was left with a little bit of a fox’s soul inside them, which gave us these ears and eyes.”

  “You have a fox’s soul inside you?” He glanced at her with a look of mingled amusement and disbelief.

  “Yes. But just a little piece of one.”

  “And now everyone in your whole country has ears like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even the men?”

  She laughed. “Yes, even the men, although they weren’t very happy about it.”

  Tycho blew out a long breath. “Well, if that’s the cure, then I’d hate to see the disease.”

  Wren winced and looked away. Visions of deformed monsters ran through a blood-soaked tapestry in her mind. “Yes, you would.”

  They walked on in silence for a minute, nodding at passing servants and soldiers. Wren tried to study the strange buildings around them, the huge towers and domes and arches and columns. Omar had told her about the buildings in the south, that they would be larger and grander than anything she had known in Ysland. And he was right, as ever. But there was no magic or mystery about the palace. It was all just cold, gray stone. Shaped and polished and cunningly arranged, yes, but just stone all the same.

  Tycho led her up the steps to a many-arched entrance, and Wren saw high above the building a square tower rising behind it.

  “She’s up there?” she asked.

  “In the Tower of Justice? No, not usually. She’s made herself quite comfortable in the lower chamber. It’s an older hall, abandoned long ago, but still intact,” Tycho said. “It’s not very nice down there.”

  “Then why does she stay there?”

  “She says she likes it.” Tycho opened the door and ushered her inside a nondescript room of polished marble filled with doorways to other chambers. “When Prince Vlad agreed to defend Constantia, we had no idea he would bring someone like Koschei with him. And I think even Vlad had no idea that Koschei would bring his mother.”

  “Life is full of small surprises,” Wren said.

  Tycho paused at the top of a stair that led down into a well of flickering torchlight. “Listen, to be honest, I’m still not sure what sort of person she is. She spent most of her time alone even before Koschei was captured. And now, since he’s been gone, she’s been more than a little unhappy, as you can imagine. She comes out at night to harass the soldiers from time to time, but other than that, we don’t see her.”

  “No one sees her, not even to bring her food?”

  “The servants leave it at the bottom of the stairs for her. But she’s made it fairly clear that she’s not in the mood to take visitors unless there’s word that her son has been freed.” Tycho said, “Are you really a witch, like her?”

  “I’m not a witch. I’m a vala.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I make medicines from herbs, and I read the stars, and I read dreams, and I talk to ghosts,” said Wren. “Anyone can do what I do, if you learn how.” She fingered the ring inside her glove again, feeling a vague sense of guilt at h
er one omission.

  But he doesn’t need to know about the aether-craft. Not yet, at least.

  “I didn’t think you were really a witch, exactly, but the black dress, and the ears, well…” Tycho shrugged. “Are you ready?”

  Wren nodded, and they descended the stairs.

  The steps spiraled down and the air grew cooler, until they stepped out of an alcove into a large chamber in which their footsteps echoed far into the distant shadows. But only a few paces from the alcove, the floor was covered in Persian carpets, which were covered in dirty animal pelts, many of which had their heads and paws still attached. Three iron braziers stood in a crooked triangle around the rugs, all burning brightly and throwing off waves of heat.

  In the center of the braziers there was a collection of gold and silver plates and goblets, none of the same size or design, and all with the remains of some old meal dried and crusted along their edges and bottoms. And seated amidst this chaos and debris, was a woman.

  Wren wasn’t sure what she had expected. A crone, a gibbering lunatic, a vicious old mother, a lady in mourning? But not this.

  The woman sitting on the pile of skins, surrounded by chewed bones and dried wine, roasting between the braziers, was…

  …beautiful. She looks like an ancient queen. What sort of witch can she possibly be? And why is she down here, living like this?

  Wren stared at the woman’s blood-red dress, the crow feathers tied into the braids of her snow white hair, the silver bracelets on her wrists, and the necklace of tiny animal skulls hanging around her neck. The woman looked up, tilting her face to the light, revealing a thousand fine lines of age and worry, but her skin was still firm, her eyes keen, and her lips ever so slightly pink.

  “Where is my son?” she asked in a deep, commanding voice.

  Wren blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

  “Then get out!” The witch flung up her hands and a white wind blasted across the braziers and shoved the two near the alcove.